Hibernate : HQL

Hibernate Query Language (HQL) is an object-oriented query language, similar to SQL, but instead of operating on tables and columns, HQL works with persistent objects and their properties. HQL queries are translated by Hibernate into conventional SQL queries which in turns perform action on database.

Although you can use SQL statements directly with Hibernate using Native SQL but I would recommend to use HQL whenever possible to avoid database portability hassles, and to take advantage of Hibernate’s SQL generation and caching strategies.

Keywords like SELECT , FROM and WHERE etc. are not case sensitive but properties like table and column names are case sensitive in HQL.

FROM Clause

You will use FROM clause if you want to load a complete persistent objects into memory. Following is the simple syntax of using FROM clause:

SELECT Clause

The SELECT clause provides more control over the result set than the from clause. If you want to obtain few properties of objects instead of the complete object, use the SELECT clause. Following is the simple syntax of using SELECT clause to get just first_name field of the Employee object:

ORDER BY Clause

To sort your HQL query’s results, you will need to use the ORDER BY clause. You can order the results by any property on the objects in the result set either ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC). Following is the simple syntax of using ORDER BY clause:

GROUP BY Clause

This clause lets Hibernate pull information from the database and group it based on a value of an attribute and, typically, use the result to include an aggregate value. Following is the simple syntax of using GROUP BY clause:

Using Named Paramters

Hibernate supports named parameters in its HQL queries. This makes writing HQL queries that accept input from the user easy and you do not have to defend against SQL injection attacks. Following is the simple syntax of using named parameters:

UPDATE Clause

Bulk updates are new to HQL with Hibernate 3, and deletes work differently in Hibernate 3 than they did in Hibernate 2. The Query interface now contains a method called executeUpdate() for executing HQL UPDATE or DELETE statements.

The UPDATE clause can be used to update one or more properties of an one or more objects. Following is the simple syntax of using UPDATE clause: